The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (Part Five)

If Bernard Piffy had been Mike Hammer he would have known what to do. He would have pulled out the old trusty Army Colt.45 and blasted Umyar back into the Pleistocene Age, filled him so full of holes he would have been mistaken for a Swiss cheese in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. But Piffy had left his peashooter back in his flat over the Red Dragon. He could have taken to his heels. That would have been another option. If he had been Jim Thorpe he would have been halfway to Heathrow the moment he had caught sight of Umyar but he was not Jim Thorpe, he was Bernard Piffy. There wasn’t much traction in his Buster Browns. Even with a head start he wouldn’t have made it out of the mosque alive!

He heard something scream! It could have been a dinosaur. It could have been Fay Wray. It could have been Bernard Piffy. It could have been Umyar who was lurching across the mosque toward him like King Kong on the way to the Empire State Building! He glanced at bint Marwan. Good grief! She was taking a powder, evaporating, pulling herself up into her halo! In another minute she would be gone and he would be left to face the music! The mosque was shaking as if Mt. Vesuvius had just erupted beneath it and a hundred tons of roofing was about to descend on the head of a broken-down old private eye named Bernard Piffy! What had he done to deserve this? He had never read the Qur’an! He didn’t know a surah from a hadith. He would give them all the jizya he had in his pocket to get out of there! Couldn’t they leave him alone? He could feel Umyar’s breath on the back of his neck—the ogre was that close! He could feel his collar burning! He was too young to die!

Then a hand reached out from what was left of the halo—a tiny hand, a child’s hand, bint Marwan’s hand! “Hurry! Hurry!” she urged.

Piffy grabbed the hand and bint Marwan pulled him into the disappearing halo! God, she was strong for someone so little. But something had him by the foot—something was tearing at his shoe, at his pants leg! The scream came again! It was Umyar, a cry of rage. The struggle for Piffy’s pants leg was brief—it was over almost before it began—and then, suddenly, he was free and the halo, now no more than a thin slice of light in what had become an inebriating darkness, shot away from the Prophet’s premier assassin. It made a circle of the mosque—maybe two—and then vanished through a hole in the wall. No, that would have been too easy. It must have been through a time warp, a blip in the Nether Sphere…yeah, something like that!

The darkness in the aura was all encompassing. It was a roller coaster ride at sonic speeds! He was upside down, then right side up. He was standing on his head, rolling over and over. His nose was running.

“Will you stop groping me!” squealed bint Marwan.

“I’m not groping you!” said Piffy. The very idea! Piffies didn’t grope children! Piffies didn’t…

“Maybe I had better stop this thing,” said bint Marwan.

And stop it she did—suddenly and completely. Piffy tumbled out of the halo into a puddle that stank worse than the Devil’s armpit! He sat there for a minute or two trying to figure out where he was. Then he got to his feet. He was covered with coffee grounds and grapefruit rinds. “You ought to put some seat belts in that damn thing!” he said.

Bint Marwan was massaging her derriere. “I’ve never had a passenger in this thing before,” she said.

A bobby with a flashlight was coming down the alley. “I say, what’s the racket here, old chap,” he asked.

It was at this point that bint Marwan, having little taste for the affairs of mere mortals, took leave of Piffy. A mist had come up and quicker than Piffy could say ‘Count Dracula’ bint Marwan had become part of it and had drifted back into her aura and in another moment she was whisking down the alley like a dead afterthought.

The bobby never noticed her. He looked Piffy up and down. “You again!” he said. “Didn’t I tell you yesterday to move on and the day before that and the day before that? And just look at you! What a mess! Do you always wallow about in the garbage like this?”

No, Piffy didn’t always wallow about in the garbage like this but there was no mistaking he was a mess. He stank; he was covered with filth, his left shoe was missing its heel and his left pants leg was shredded from the knee down. It could have been worse, but he didn’t’ see how.

“Run along now,” said the bobby. “I don’t want to see you here again. Understand?”

Piffy understood.

He made his way back to the Red Dragon. As he walked up the steps to his flat he caught a whiff of cordite and phosgene! On, no! Not again! Not Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour! Of all the rotten luck! That was all he needed! He paused a moment, took a deep breath. Yes! Cordite and phosgene! He would have preferred Pepe le pew. This is where Jessica Fletcher would call in the cops and they would make the arrest. But what could he do? Tell the cops he had seen Mohammad Atta and Hani Hanjour try to machine gun a 1,400 year-old philosopher in front of a Dallas restaurant on a dark and stormy night? Even Bulwer-Lytton wouldn’t believe that. He had to approach this thing like Mike Hammer, not like Jessica Fletcher. Sure, he could take the law into his own hands. Or he could decide that discretion was the better part of valor. For a moment he was tempted to turn around and find an all-night library or a bus station in some reputable neighborhood, someplace where it would be safe. He could come back later and try again.

It took him a moment to regain his composure. He took a deep breath, went up the stairs and trudged down the corridor to his flat. Odd—the odor of cordite and phosgene wasn’t as strong as it had been coming up the stairs. Were they behind him? Maybe he could make a stand in his reum. He hurried to his flat, threw open the door.

There was a man lying on his bed—a man in a trench coat and a crown hat with a long thin nose and a trim mustache. It was Inspector Clouseau!

“Ah, you are still alive!” said Clouseau.

“What are you doing here?” said Piffy.

“What does it look like?” said Clouseau. ‘I am looking for a reum.”

“A reum?” Piffy glanced around the flat—what was left of it. It looked as if a Kansas twister had touched down for an afternoon snack. Everything was turned upside down; papers were strewn across the floor; drawers had been pulled open and their contents dumped in careless piles. The easy chair had lost some of its stuffing and a spring was sticking out of the mattress right where Clouseau was making himself at home. The lining was gone from Piffy’s suitcase and someone had poured his aftershave into the kitchen sink—but the place smelled nice.

Piffy turned on the Inspector. He was as mad as a blue hornet. He, Bernard Piffy as occupant of the first part, would be expected to pay for the damages. He felt like taking it out of Clouseau’s hide. “What the hell were you looking for?” he said.

Clouseau swung his feet over the edge of the bed. “Toenail clippings,” he said.

“Toenail clippings?” said Piffy. That was ridiculous!

“They know you are looking for Yaser Abdel Said,” said Clouseau.

It didn’t make any sense. “Good Grief!” said Piffy. “ Did they think I was hiding him here? I haven’t found him yet.”

“They know that,” said Clouseau. “They’re not interested in Said. They were looking for the toenail clippings. What they don’t like is your interfering in their affairs.”

“Out!” said Piffy. “Out!”

“They know about your contract with the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club. They know about bint Marwan.”

“Out!” said Piffy.

Clouseau stood up. “Have you met Bond?” he said. “I can arrange an interview if you wish. He is a quaint fellow. British to a fault.”

“Out!” said Piffy. He grabbed a bookend from the debris on the floor.

“Well, I can see you’re in no mood to talk,” said Clouseau. He backed toward the door. “Remember, for two quid I can arrange a meeting with 007” Then he bowed—he had reached the exit. “Viva la France,” he said and then he was gone.

Piffy lay down on the bed. It was too late to do anything but cry and he was too tired for that. Maybe things would look better in the morning.

Maybe he should have set the alarm clock. He overslept by a couple of hours. He took a quick shower, put on his spare suit, dabbed some aftershave on his face from the sink. He didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to contact bint Marwan but he was sure she would take care of that. They had some unfinished business to attend to—the soul of Yaser Abdel Said. But first he would have to find a new pair of shoes. He couldn’t go clumping around London like Walter Brennan in The Real McCoys unless he grew a scraggly beard and learned how to whistle through his teeth. And there was the stain in spare pants. He would need a new pair. He was sure Dan Tanna didn’t have these kinds of problems. And there was that bobby on the beat. He would notice a missing heel.

He left the Red Dragon. Something seemed to be pulling him toward the Birmingham Central Mosque. It must have been Kismet. A peddler was selling shoes from a cart directly across the street. The man seemed to be a friendly sort.

Piffy crossed the street to take a look at the shoes in the cart. He was impressed. They were good sturdy brogues, the kind that would have appealed to Jed Clampett. They had been imported from Turkey—the George W. Bush U-2 model said the peddler; they were noted for their sturdiness and ability to maintain a true course when launched on a proper trajectory. Piffy could only guess at what he meant by that.

A blind man with a seeing-eye dog came up and began to argue with the peddler. The dog took a liking to Piffy. It was a nice pooch with large liquid eyes. It sniffed Piffy here and there and nuzzled Piffy’s hand. He scratched the dog’s head. “How you doing, Cujo?” he said.

A large group of Muslims had collected across the street to escort an Imam to a waiting vehicle.

“Could I try on one of these shoes?” Piffy asked the peddler.

“Allahu akber!” said the peddler. “You are my tenth customer this morning. Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim!”

Piffy took off the shoe with the missing heel. He set it atop the cart; then rummaged amongst the footgear till he found one to his liking—the good sturdy reliable George W. Bush U-2 model. It came highly recommended. His back was to the street, to the Muslims clustered about the Imam. He decided to take a look inside the shoe to check its size. He didn’t want to purchase something so small it would pinch his toes or something so large it could pass for a gunboat.

He had just brought the Bush U-2 model up to his face to look inside when the seeing-eye dog mistook his left leg for another dog. Or maybe the mutt was just horny and wanted to cop a quick feel. Piffy was startled by the suddenness of the assault. He yelped as Cujo’s nose ventured into restricted territory and the hand holding the Bush U-2 shot into the air. The shoe slipped from his fingers and went sailing across the street and into the believers gathered about the Imam. It must have been launched on the proper trajectory. It went ‘thunk’ and there was a stunned silence! It was shock and awe! And then came the screams!

“He threw his shoe at ul-Haq!” someone cried.

“Who?”

A bearded man—what the heck, they were all bearded—pointed at Piffy. An ugly murmur rose from a dozen throats

“It was the Kuffar!” bleated an overweight replica of Omar Bakri.

“Blasphemy! Blasphemy!” they were yelling. “He has insulted Islam!”

It didn’t take Piffy long to realize what had happened. If it wasn’t the faux pas of the Century it was close! He grabbed his shoe from the top of cart and took off down the street with the mob after him. He might not have been Jim Thorpe at the ’12 Olympics but even with one shoe on and one shoe off he was a damn site faster than Walter Brennan. Fortunately he had won every foot race he had been in since Romper Room School and he could motor. Still he would need every last MPH he could muster. It wasn’t going to be easy.

“Holy Mother of God,” he muttered over and over again. “Holy Mother of God, have mercy on me!”

Maybe he should have yelled “Allahu akbar” but that wouldn’t have fooled anybody—certainly not the mob that was after him! It was open season on dhimmis in England—had been for a long time—and the hunters had government permits!

That was when he remembered a line from the Qur’an.

(Qur’an: 9:5)“Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait for them and ambush them using every stratagem of war.”

Fight and kill! Lie in wait! Ambush them!

(To be continued)

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